A family in Russia’s Barnaul region was recently taken to court by the local energy company for accumulating a debt of approximately 80,000 rubles ($1,218) in unpaid bills. In their defense, the accused claimed that it was all their cat’s fault, not theirs.

It’s one thing for kids to say “the dog ate my homework”, but you don’t often hear adults trying to lay the blame on their pets in order to avoid taking responsibility for their actions. That’s exactly what this family in Barnaul did, though, and not just anywhere, but in front of a judge. Accused of refusing to pay the local energy company around 80,000 in electrical bills, they claimed that they hadn’t actually used the electricity, but that meter had been tampered with by their mischievous cat.

Yungar, a remote town in the Peruvian Andes, has been receiving worldwide attention in the past couple of weeks, because of the efforts of a man named Lenin to stop one of the candidates, named Hitler, from running in the upcoming municipal elections.

Hitler Alba Sánchez, also known as ‘Hitler of the Andes’ or ‘The Good Hitler’, has already served as mayor of Yungar between 2011 and 2014, and he is now trying out for a second term. However, his candidacy was challenged by a local man called Lenin Vladimir Rodríguez Valverde, who claimed that Hitler wasn’t eligible because of his previous term as mayor. The attempt to sabotage The Good Hitler’s election ultimately failed, but the bizarre coincidence of these two men’s names has become an international news topic.

A Maine artist managed to carve a unique niche for herself by using moose droppings as the main medium for her artworks.

It’s not clear when or how Somerville resident Mary Winchenbach got the idea to use moose poop to make art, but after showing off her witty-named “Tirdy Works” at the Common Ground Fair, in Unity, Maine, people have been going crazy for them. Her official Facebook page has thousands of ‘likes’ and comments from people wanting to buy some. Her collection of Tirdy Works features clocks, figurines, jewelry, among other things, all made with genuine ‘Maine Moose Tirds’.

A man named Valery recently became the star of what may very well be the most epic fail in the history of iPhone launches. After becoming the first person in a monstrously long queue to set foot inside the Apple store in Moscow to buy an iPhone XS, he left empty-handed because he couldn’t afford to buy it.

On the morning of September 28, the Apple store in Moscow finally opened its doors to the crowd of people that had been lining up outside for over 24 hours to buy the new iPhone XS and XS Max. Apple fans have been queuing up for new iPhone launches all around the world for years now, but what made this particular event special was the amount of fail involved. For one thing, the first eight people at the head of the giant queue evaporated minutes before the store opened. It turns out they had never planned on buying a phone, hoping to sell their places in line for absurd amounts of money, instead. But they were actually the smart ones, because the ninth guy planned to do the same thing, only he didn’t have the brains to bail before the doors opened.

The first thing you expect to be able to do when buying a swimsuit is swim in it, but that doesn’t apply to the Gucci Logo Swimsuit, a $380 designer swimsuit that the company specifically states should not come into contact with chlorine.

The high-end one-piece swimsuit features Gucci’s iconic logo across the bust, cross-over straps, and has a vintage air to it that would have surely made a splash at the pool. But since it’s made of 80 per cent nylon and 20 per cent elastane, two materials that just don’t get along with chlorine, you don’t want to be caught anywhere near a pool in this swimsuit. And Gucci is very upfront about the whole ‘swimsuit you can’t swim in’ thing, to the delight of social media:

Jaroslav Bobrowski, a young Ironman triathlete from Germany, was recently banned by an-all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant for eating around 100 plates of food, something the owner considered “not normal” and very bad for business.

30-year-old Bobrowski works as a software engineer, but also trains for Ironman triathlons and is on a special diet where he doesn’t eat anything for 20 hours a day and then eats until he is full. Last weekend, he and his girlfriend stopped at the Running Sushi all-you-can-eat restaurant in Landshut, Bavaria, where he paid the fixed price of €15.90 and spent about an hour and a half stuffing himself with around 100 plates of sushi. At one point, waiters just stopped clearing his table of plates and when he finally finished, the former bodybuilder was told that he wasn’t welcome anymore.

A Russian pensioner recently made national news headlines after stripping two tall pine trees on his neighbors’ property of all their branches and using them as supports for a wooden tree house. He never asked for permission to do this, instead taking advantage of the fact that they were away on vacation.

Irina Chukanova and her family have been living on a small plot of land near the city of Nizhny Tagil for 10 years, and they’ve never had any problems with their neighbor, Yuri Stepanov. That all changed this spring, when the pensioner started complaining about the two pine trees growing on the Chukanovs’ property, claiming that all the needles and cones ended up on his land, and he was sick of having to clean up the mess. He repeatedly asked his neighbors to cut down the trees, but they were reluctant to do so, and instead promised to come up with a solution in the fall. Only Stepanov apparently got sick of waiting, and decided to take matters into his own hands.

A fish shop in Kuwait was recently shut down by authorities after it was revealed that the fishmonger was sticking plastic googly eyes on the fish in an attempt to make them look fresher.

The measure to shut down the unnamed shop was taken after photos of a plastic eye that had slipped off revealing the yellow eye of the fish went viral on Twitter last week. While some social media users were outraged by the deceitful tactic of the fishmonger, asking for a hefty fine for cheating, others were simply amused and even impressed by the originality displayed by the fish seller.

Men often go to great lengths to fulfill their loved ones’ wishes, but this story is a bout a guy who went to extremes to ensure that he wouldn’t have to fulfill a promise he had made to his girlfriend, while at the same time making sure that she didn’t blame him for it.

Earlier this month, a man surnamed Tang, from Chengdu, China, promised his girlfriend that he would buy her a brand new luxury car, and she made sure to constantly remind him of his promise ever since. The problem was that Tang didn’t have the money, and with time running out, he had to come up with a way out of this mess that he had put himself in. His solution, though undoubtedly original, was pretty extreme.

After waiting for local authorities to fix a massive pothole for several months, residents of Poplar Plain Crescent, in Toronto, decided to make the best of it by transforming the hole into a community tomato garden.

It’s unclear who came up with the idea of plating tomato seeds into the neglected pothole earlier this summer, but as the plants sprouted and flourished, neighborhood residents started caring for them, even installing stakes to keep them from falling over. Photos of the fully grown tomato plants featuring dozens of juicy green tomatoes are a testament to both the locals care and sense of humour, but also of the indifference of local authorities.

In the currently oversaturated market of ride-sharing, entrepreneurs strive to out-innovate one another by offering unique perks. One such pioneer is Timothy Hochstedler from Colon, Michigan, who’s created a one-of-a-kind “Amish Uber”. He isn’t actually affiliated with Uber, but has stepped up to fulfill the needs of an area lacking in taxi options.

Nowadays, when you want to get somewhere and you don’t have a car, or don’t want to drive, all you have to do is whip out your smartphone, open up the app for Uber, and you’ll get a lift to your desired destination within minutes. But while other regular ride-share passengers climb into a car, Timothy’s customers step up into a horse-drawn buggy. For just $5, he will take riders throughout Colon on a scenic trip to wherever they desire.

Japanese company Thanko recently launched a handheld, battery-powered device that allows you to wash the dishes without getting your hands dirty.

Let’s face it, most people hate washing the dishes. And it’s not just the chore itself that’s putting them off, but the fact that they have to touch those disgusting food scraps while they’re doing it. Well, if you’ve been hoping for a solution to this problem, your prayers have been answered. Introducing “Kurasa Wash” a quirky handheld device that does all the dirty work for you. Just take any dirty dish or bowl, grip it with the two crab-like arms of the device and then just push a button. Kurasa Wash will add detergent and start spinning the dish while scrubbing it with brushes and sponges. All you have to do is hold the dish under running water for rinsing and you’re done.

An English army captain recently smashed his way out of a barracks toilet after being stripped naked and locked in there by soldiers during a drunken prank. He is now being investigated and will most likely have to pay for the damages.

The incident took place last last week, in the barracks of an Army bomb disposal unit, at Carver Barracks in Essex, England. The unnamed captain and his soldiers started drinking last Tuesday, right after he attended a formal ceremony to mark the reformation of 49 Field Squadron. Army sources who preferred to remain anonymous claims that at one point, the captain fell asleep, and the soldiers stripped him naked and locked him in a disabled toilet, as a prank.

A Chinese man who drove his expensive Land Rover SUV into a river in order to save 20 yuan ($3) on a car wash, recently learned the hard way that sometimes being too cheap can cost you a lot more than you were trying to save.

According to a report from the Fire Services Department in Dujiangyan, China’s Sichuan Province, last week, a local man had to be rescued from a nearby river after driving his Land Rover SUV into the water to wash it and getting stranded on a small islet. The man told rescuers that he simply wanted to wash his car so he wouldn’t have to go to the car wash and pay the 20 yuan fee, but he didn’t expect the flood gates of an upstream dam to be opened causing the water level to rise almost instantly.

A Peruvian man recently got his five minutes of online fame after his curious signature went viral on social media. Instead of the typical scribble or just a simple ‘X’, this guy always signs his name with the childish drawing of a kitten.

The man’s signature went viral after a photo of his ID next to an official police document signed by him were posted online by police in the coastal town of Huarmey. He along with five other had been arrested on July 18 on charges of gun possession, and after being taken to the local police station and signed into jail, one signature drew the attention of officers on duty. Instead of a name or a simple scribble, 31-year-old Juan Carlos Varillas Bazán had drawn a childish doodle of a kitten. Only after checking his ID and seeing that it featured the same drawing as a signature did they realize that they were not being trolled and that that was really the guy’s signature. They thought it was hilarious so they posted the documents on the station’s Facebook page for everyone to see.